A master thesis from Aalborg University
Playing me, playing him: Embodying a player character and its effect on decision-making in video games.
[Spiller mig, spiller ham: Embodying en spiller karakter og dets virkning på beslutningstagning i videospil]
Term
4. term
Education
Publication year
2019
Submitted on
2019-05-24
Pages
20 pages
Abstract
Målet med dette projekt er at undersøge, om embodiment påvirker de beslutninger, spillerne laver i et videospil. Til denne undersøgelse blev der skabt et spil med beslutningstagning som en primær komponent til to forskellige platforme. En der afspilles på en standard pc-opsætning og en, der afspilles ved hjælp af en VR-opsætning. Derudover blev der udviklet to forskellige versioner med varierende grad af narrativitet for hver platform. Dette gøres for at undersøge virkningerne af embodiment alene og for at se, om tilsætningen af en fortælling ophæver de potentielle virkninger af embodiment i denne sammenhæng. Undersøgelsen havde i alt 72 deltagere, og der blev indsamlet data om hvilke beslutninger de havde taget, hvorfor de tog den nævnte beslutning, samt hvor vanskelige de fandt at tage beslutningen. Resultaterne tyder på, at embodiment ikke har nogen signifikant virkning på beslutningstagning i videospil. Imidlertid mangler disse resultater den ønskede pålidelighed, og yderligere undersøgelse er derfor nødvendig for et mere afklaret svar.
The goal of this project is to investigate if the sense of embodiment affects the decisions players makes in a video game. For this study, a game with decision-making as a primary component for two different platforms was created. One that is played on a standard PC setup and one that is played using a VR setup. Additionally, two different versions with varying degrees of narrativity was developed for each platform. This is done to investigate the effects of embodiment alone and to see if the addition of a narrative nullifies the potential effects of embodiment in this context. The study had a total of 72 participants and data was gathered on what decisions they made, why they made said decision as well as how difficult they found the decision. The findings suggests that the sense of embodiment has no significant effect on decision-making in video games. However, these findings lack the desired reliability and further investigation is therefore needed for a more conclusive answer.
Keywords
Embodiment ; Sense of Embodiment ; Decision-making ; Choices ; Video games ; Games ; Virtual Reality ; VR ; Narrativity
Documents
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